Marisha Pessl Quotes - Page 2

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Books Character Dad Feelings Hate Writing

His characters are ravaged, beaten. They walk through infernos and emerged charred doves.

Marisha Pessl

Character, Dove, Inferno

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We're living longer, we social network alone with our screens, and our depth of feeling gets shallower. Soon it'll be nothing but a tide pool, then a thimble of water, then a micro drop.

Marisha Pessl

Water, Feelings, Tides

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Because every one of us has our box, a dark chamber stowing the thing that lanced our heart. It contains what you do everything for, strive for, wound everything around you.

Marisha Pessl

Heart, Dark, Strive

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Always live your life with your biography in mind," Dad was fond of saying. "Naturally, it won't be published unless you have a Magnificent Reason, but at the very least you will be living grandly.

Marisha Pessl

Dad, Live Your Life, Mind

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.58, Penguin

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The late great Horace Lloyd Swithin (1844-1917), British essayist, lecturer, satirist, and social observer, wrote in his autobiographical Appointments, 1890-1901 (1902), "When one travels abroad, one doesn't so much discover the hidden Wonders of the World, but the hidden wonders of the individuals with whom one is traveling. They may turn out to afford a stirring view, a rather dull landscape, or a terrain so treacherous one finds it's best to forget the entire affair and return home.

Marisha Pessl

Home, Views, World

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.280, Penguin

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I was aware too how strange adults were, how theirs lives were vaster than they wanted anyone to realize, that they actually stretched on and on like deserts, dry and desolate, with an unpredictable, shifting sea of dunes.

Marisha Pessl

Sea, Adults, Desert

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.392, Penguin

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...I couldn't let go of the thought that it had, in fact, been he, restless and moody Heathcliff. Day after day, he floated through all the Wal-Marts in America, searching for me in a million lonely aisles.

Marisha Pessl

Letting Go, Lonely, America

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.53, Penguin

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Those around you can have their novellas, sweet, their short stories of cliché and coincidence, occasionally spiced up with tricks of the quirky, the achingly mundane, the grotesque. A few will even cook up Greek tragedy, those born into misery, destined to die in misery. But you, my bride of quietness, you will craft nothing less than epic with your life. Out of all of them, your story will be the one to last.

Marisha Pessl

Sweet, Epic, Greek

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.84, Penguin

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It was what accidental deaths did to people, made everybody's sea floor irregular and uneven, causing tidal currents to collide, surge upward, thereby resulting in small yet volatile eddies churning at everybody's surface. (In the more dangerous cases, it created a lasting whirlpool in which the strongest swimmers could drown.)

Marisha Pessl

Sea, People, Swimmer

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.192, Penguin

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Such things as anguish, woe, affliction, guilt, feelings of awfulness, and utter wretchedness, the bread and butter of Days of Yore and Russians, sadly have very little staying power in these lickety-split Modern Times.

Marisha Pessl

Feelings, Guilt, Affliction

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.166, Penguin

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Dad always warned that it was misleading when one imagined people, when one sas them in the Mind's Eye, because one never remembered them as they really were, with as many inconsistencies as there were hairs on a human head (100,000 to 200,000). Instead, the mind used a lazy shorthand, smoothed the person over into their most dominating characteristic--their pessimism or insecurity (something really being lazy, turning them into either Nice or Mean)--and one made the mistake of judging them from this basis alone and risked, on a subsequent encounter, being dangerously surprised.

Marisha Pessl

Dad, Mistake, Nice

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Not returning phone calls is the severest form of torture in the civilized world.

Marisha Pessl

Phones, World, Phone Calls

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.327, Penguin

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…deep-diving love, a love that excavates you. It’s something you have to have before you die in order to have lived.

Marisha Pessl

Order, Diving, Dies

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Look at Picasso. O’Neill. Tennessee Williams. Capote. Were these shiny happy people spreading sunshine? No. Only the greatest of personal demons can force you to do powerful work.

Marisha Pessl

Powerful, Sunshine, People

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Life had been a suit I'd only put on for special occasions. Most of the time I kept it in the back of my closet, forgetting it was there. We were meant to die when it was barely stitched anymore, when the elbows and knees were stained with grass and mud, shoulder pads uneven from people hugging you all the time, downpours and blistering sun, the fabric faded, buttons gone.

Marisha Pessl

People, Hug, Special

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...the deepest secrets about ourselves that we, in the ultimate act of humanity, will spare those we truly love.

Marisha Pessl

Humanity, Secret, Spares

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Man's wobbly little mind isn't equipped for hauling around the great unknowns. Very few people realize, there's no point chasing after answers to life's important questions. They all have fickle, highly whimsical minds of their own. Nevertheless. If you're patient, if you don't rush them, when they're ready, they'll smash into you. And don't be surprised if afterward you're speechless and there are cartoon Tweety Birds chirping around your head. (Gareth van Meer)

Marisha Pessl

Men, Birds Chirping, People

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Some people are as fragile as butterflies and sensitive and it’s your responsibility not to destroy them. Just because you can

Marisha Pessl

Butterfly, Responsibility, People

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.201, Penguin

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Mortal fear is as crucial a thing to our lives as love. It cuts to the core of our being and shows us what we are. Will you step back and cover your eyes? Or will you have the strength to walk to the precipice and look out?

Marisha Pessl

Eye, Cutting, Looks

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Well, it doesn't look good. Makes me look like one of those unloved latchkey children they make after-school specials about." "Don't sell yourself short. You're more Masterpiece Theatre.

Marisha Pessl

Children, Father, School

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.94, Penguin

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In college I studied '60s and '70s radicalism, student activism, forms of political violence, groups like the Weathermen, the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the New Left.

Marisha Pessl

Army, College, Political

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In America, people of a certain age ask, 'Where were you when Kennedy was shot?' In my house you were more likely to be asked, 'Where were you when you first read 'The Catcher In The Rye?

Marisha Pessl

America, People, House

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But when you flee someone, no matter how far you roam, that person will follow you as doggedly as the stars.

Marisha Pessl

Stars, Matter, Persons

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Some people, every now and then, simply had to have One Too Many, go drifty voiced and slouch mouthed, swimming willfully around in their own sadness as if it were hot springs.

Marisha Pessl

Spring, Sadness, Swimming

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.203, Penguin

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Occasionally when I'm procrastinating writing, I'll while away the hours on iTunes. You can just keep going forever and find these bands you'd never normally hear of.

Marisha Pessl

Writing, Forever, Band

"Random Rules: Marisha Pessl" by Andy Battaglia, www.avclub.com. November 14, 2006.

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Born: October 26, 1977
Occupation: Writer
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